In the field of real estate, and in particular the new home market, there is a need to identify customers that may potentially purchase homes. Such customers—often called “leads”—typically attend an “open house” or a developer's model sales office with the goal of evaluating a property to determine if they want to purchase it. At an open house or developer's model sales office, real estate professionals such as salespeople try to meet each customer personally and, in the process, ascertain customer data such as his name, contact information, price range, and property preferences.
In some instances, model sales offices (or open houses) are so busy that, regardless of the sales staff's efforts, some customers visit the property but are never approached personally. In these situations, a never approached customer may become discouraged because his questions regarding the property are not answered. Moreover, because the promotional materials are expensive to produce (especially for upscale communities), marketing literature (e.g., brochures, pamphlets, flyers, and the like) is rarely left out for pickup. Accordingly, customers often leave a developer's model sales office with little or no information regarding the property and its offerings while the sales staff fails to collect leads.
Even when a sales person has the ability to talk directly with a customer, that customer may prefer not to interface directly with the salesperson. For example, the customer may be intimidated by overly aggressive salespeople; or, the customer may simply want to view the property, retrieve relevant marketing literature, and leave without investing much time.
Additionally, real estate professionals such as salespeople often value feedback from customers and their agents regarding, for example, the model sales office (or open house), the marketing literature, the properties offered, operation of the customer terminal, etc. Follow-up telephone calls, however, are time-consuming and often received as intrusive or annoying.
Thus, a need exists for a system that can—without little or no involvement of a salesperson—collect customer and agent data, provide customers with relevant marketing literature, disseminate the customer and agent data to the sales staff, and follow-up with customers and their agents to solicit feedback.